6 Leaps in Innovation that Led to the Era of Advertising Science®

Today is Leap Day – a bonus day that comes only once every four years. As an integrated marketing agency, we’ve decided to take this day to celebrate all of the ways the advertising industry has been revolutionized in the past 50 years.

We celebrate six key leaps in innovation that make Calise Partners, and other progressive advertising agencies, possible. This brief but important review reminds us how leaps in technology keep us on our toes as an ad agency. Get your pencils — or better yet — get your styluses ready:

Leap #1: Computers

Oh, computers. So fundamental, yet they’ve only been around for personal use since 1975. How would we function without them in the modern world? We certainly wouldn’t be blogging right now about leaps in technology and innovation. Believe it or not, the first personal computer was released just 41 years ago and was called the Altair. The Altair was built by Microsoft founders Bill Gates and Paul G. Allen. This was soon followed by the introduction of desktop publishing in 1985. Remember the countless hours spent creating and finalizing an ad? We do. Aldus, a company later bought by Adobe, changed the game for advertisers when they released the first ever desktop publishing software, giving advertising agencies, publishing companies and even independent designers, writers and artists the ability to produce advertising materials in a mere fraction of the time.

Leap #2: World Wide Web

We know — computers are the best invention since sliced bread. But what about the World Wide Web? 1989, a British scientist at CERN invented the World Wide Web so scientists around the world could share their findings with one another. Then, in 1993, the World Wide Web was released into the public domain, giving anyone with a computer and a modem access to massive amounts of content and information. This liberating access to information was further enhanced by the invention of Wi-Fi. First introduced in 1999, suddenly people could access the power of the World Wide Web wirelessly, taking it off their desktops and putting it in places like coffee shops, airports, and student unions.

Leap #3: Social Media

The release of Six Degrees in 1997 is recognized as the first social media website. But it was MySpace that became the first major social media network in 2003. It’s easy to forget that, not too long ago, we lived in an isolated world without YouTube and no way to easily share that hysterical commercial we just watched on TV. Imagine a world where you couldn’t boost that amazing post your company just shared on Facebook. Or a time when targeting your audience was much more complicated than a pre-determined algorithm on Twitter. Basically, life before social media must have been intolerable.

Leap #4: Smartphones

Smartphones allowed consumers to do just that, consume – anywhere and anytime. Technically, the first smartphone was released in 1992 by IBM, and it was called the IBM Simon. Being that wireless internet had not even been invented yet, we consider the iPhone the first modern day smartphone, which released in 2007. After the release of Apple’s iPhone, we quickly saw the release of smartphones by Microsoft and Google’s Android. With these amazing devices, you could finally read the news, have your questions answered and engage in social media on the go. Smartphones dramatically expanded the number of people that spent their time online. As advertisers, we were thrilled to have the increase in opportunities to put our clients’ brands right in front of their target audience.

Leap #5: Analytical Research Tool (ie. Google Analytics)

One of the biggest game changers in advertising was the emergence of powerful analytical tools like Google Analytics, KISSmetrics and Gauges. Now advertisers could measure the performance of their advertising. Today, there are seemingly so many analytical software options to select from, it’s hard to remember that just a few years ago, you had to be a giant corporation with massive resources if you wanted to collect and analyze marketing data and consumer information. Now there are a myriad of options available on your web browser for a low monthly fee.

Leap #6: AdScience®

All of these leaps in innovation have laid the groundwork for the creation of Calise Partners’ very own AdScience data management solution. This powerful technology aggregates customer data from various sources and appends demographic, brand affinity and customer intent data to garner new insights into a client’s customer base, ultimately mining for new customers more effectively. Once campaigns are developed based on these real-time insights, the platform measures the interrelationships between each media channel (both online and offline) and its overall impact on the cost per lead and conversion to a customer.

Pictured here is just one of the many data visualizations produced through the AdScience Platform. The AdScience Platform took more than one year to develop and is currently being deployed by many of Calise Partners’ clients.